Getting the appropriate help in a retail store is, in many cases, a frustrating experience. Store personnel are generally not trained well and are not employed for long periods of time to gain experience with the products the personnel sell. Thus, a customer is often left to find information for himself or herself either before going to a store or by scouring the information in the store. The difficulty a customer faces in finding the information necessary to make a purchase leads to a degraded shopping experience. For example, a customer who purchases a HDTV may not know that in order to view high definition images on the television she needs to buy an HDMI or DVI cable. The customer then takes the television home and realizes that she does not have the proper accessories to utilize the television's high definition capability. The customer must then make a return trip to the store to purchase an HDMI or DVI cable. The resulting poor shopping experience can reduce customer spending, create an impaired customer experience, increase customer returns, raise product dissatisfaction, and motivate customer defection.
From a customer's perspective, common issues include: 1) inability to get attention or service when he or she needs it; 2) lack of a knowledgeable sales staff regarding the products(s) the unfulfilled customer desires; 3) poor purchase decisions made without assistance from knowledgeable sales staff or objective third parties; 4) inability to locate the desired product in the store; and, 5) disconnection between the customer's online shopping experience and his or her in-store shopping experience. From the retailer's perspective, common issues include: 1) employee attrition is very high; 2) employees' sales effectiveness is constrained by limited experience; 3) employee training costs for products and services are high; 4) employee training for staff is not always effective; 5) customers are often better informed than sales staff; 6) lost opportunities for sales of complementary products and services; 7) a retailer's most valued customers are not “recognized” when they enter the store; and, 8) opportunities are lost to ensure a high quality shopping experience and repeat visits by high-valued customers.
To combat these problems, some stores have provided mechanical “kiosks” that connect the customer to a live agent. By doing so, the agent is able to guide the customer through the information on the kiosk and answer customer questions. These sessions generally involve co-browsing, i.e., the content the customer views on the kiosk is exactly the same as the content viewed by the agent, and are generally implemented using web-based frames or Flash technology. However, such implementation requires large amounts of bandwidth to transmit the co-browsing session from the agent to the kiosk. Furthermore, because the sessions are co-browsed, the agent is limited to viewing the same information as the customer, therefore preventing the agent from viewing additional helpful information, e.g., sales scripting.